So that’s twenty Bored Wolves books conceived, developed, designed, printed, and published in the past eighteen months. Twenty books that can now be held in palms and laps, carried in totes and rucksacks, and tucked under pillows at night.
The poets and artists we’ve been blessed to work with on these editions are from twelve countries. We’ve tapped ten graphic designers from seven countries. We currently have thirty-six(!) publications in development, for 2023–2025, with poets and artists from Chile, Egypt, England, Finland, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Pakistan, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and the US.
Perhaps my favorite stat is 1 (one): we’re all together building one permeable, border-skipping Bored Wolves community, based on exchange and mutual inspiration, that includes our poets, artists, graphic designers, translators, printers and binders, readers, bookseller allies, and other small presses we’ve begun working with (communities overlapping!).
This is the dream. Once upon a time, during our mid-decade wilderness years, my greatest goal for Bored Wolves was that each project would make the next one that much easier to catalyze; would grease the wheels of the next collaboration. That was it. And that was everything to me.
At book fairs, folks often ask me why we’re “bored,” and I explain that the “boredom” was actually a sort of yearning malaise I experienced acutely in the years 2010–2014, after emigrating to Poland, when I was longing to do and make and share but I didn’t have any collaborative opportunities yet, and the gatekeepers were all regretful that my poetry was “not right for them at this time.” So that time was tough. I flubbed gears, gnashed teeth, and crisscrossed cobbled Kraków without direction.
As one poem and essay after another were rejected, I’d reply with, “Hell’s bells but thanks for considering,” though I suspected I hadn’t really been good-faith considered. More gnashing and crisscrossing. Eventually I said: “This is a wasteful use of seasons. I believe in my stuff. No more submitting and waiting. No more work condemned to the darkness of desk drawers. From now on, just making and sharing.” Empowering verbs.
We released my prose-poetry collection Great Known: An Autobiographical Cairn in the summer of 2015—and though we were still five years away from our first collaboration, with third wolf Sevinç Çalhanoğlu, since Great Known, we haven’t looked back or waited for anyone else to give us a green light. We’ve also found ways to detour around broken lights stuck on red.
And we haven’t experienced an iota of boredom ever since. I still keep the Bored in our name as a reminder never to take all this collaborative goodness for granted.
A heartfelt thank you to all of you reading this who have strengthened our endeavors with your support, from the buttresses of curiosity and belief to adding our books to your shelves and telling your friends and neighborhood booksellers about our catalogue.
And special thanks to our guardian angel Anne Germanacos, whose support of Bored Wolves through her catalytic, San Francisco–based Firehouse Fund initiative has been crucial during an extremely challenging stretch for publishing books.
Take care, be well, keep warm, and no matter what: DO,
Stefan
